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A SERMON 



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REV. HERRICK JOHNSON, 

PASTOR OF THE THIRD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, 
Sunday, September 11th, 1864. 



Published b;^ request of the Young Men of the Congregation. 



PITTSBURGH: 

PRINTED SY Yv'. S. HAVEN, CORNER WOOD AND THIRD STREETS. 

1864. 






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Executive Mansion, 1 

Washingtox, September 3, lS6i, f 

The signal success that Divine Providence has re- 
cently vouchsafed to the operations of the United States 
fleet and army, in the harbor of Mobile, and the reduc- 
tion of Fort Powell, Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan, and 
the glorious achievements of the army under General 
Sherman in the State of Georgia, resulting in the cap- 
ture of the city of Atlanta, call for devout acknowledg- 
ments to the Supreme Being in whose hands are the des- 
tinies of the people. It is therefore requested, that on 
next Sunday, in all the places of worship in the United 
States, thanksgiving be offered to Him for His mercy in 
preserving the national existence against the insurgent 
rebels, who have been waging a cruel war against the 
Government of the United States for its overthrow ; and 
also that prayer be made for Divine protection to our 
brave soldiers and their leaders in the field, who have so 
often and so gallantly periled their lives in battling with 
the enemy, and for the blessing and comfort from the 
Father of Mercies to the sick, wounded and prisoners, 
and to the orphans and widows of those who have fallen 
in the service of their country, and that He will continue 
to uphold the Government of the United States against 
all the efforts of public enemies and secret foes. 
(Signed,) 

Abraham Lincoln. 



SERMON. 



"And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of 
those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, 
that those things which cannot be shaken mat remain.'"— 
Heb. 12 : 27. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews sets forth the world's two 
great dispensations — the dispensation of Law, and the dis- 
pensation of Grace; the two great religions that have had 
authorship and sanction in heaven — the Jewish religion and 
the Christian. It asserts and proves the great superiority of 
the latter over the former. Sinai and Calvary are set in con- 
trast, as the bold mountain-fronts of the respective systems. 
Moses and Jesus appear as the representatives of obedience 
and faith. The Apostle, in the course of his masterly argu- 
ment, calls history and prophecy into requisition to prove that 
the glory of the new dispensation surpasses in every respect 
the glory of the old. Among other points of proof is that 
Avhich refers to the impressive incidents accompanying their 
respective inaugurations, and the marked effects that followed. 
In the one case, at the giving of the Law, God's voice shook 
the earth. In the other, to secure the introduction, diffusion 
and final success of the Gospel, God had promised, saying. 



''Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven/' 
Under the legal dispensation, the earth had been shaken by 
the voice of the Lord, as he came to give the law to Moses. 
The Prophet Haggai assures us that in securing the introduc- 
tion, perpetuity and universality of the gospel dispensation, 
God will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and 
the dry land, and all nations. And the Apostle, writing to 
the Hebrews, quotes this prophecy in condensed form, ex- 
plaining the "once more" with which it is introduced, as 
signifying the removing of those things that are shaken, that 
the things which cannot be shaken may remain. 

Shaking the heavens is of course a figurative expression, 
and undoubtedly refers to the Avonderful changes and revolu- 
tions that would occur in morals and religion, affecting the 
entire framework of society and civil government throughout 
the whole earth as antecedent to, and in connection with, the 
establishment of "the kingdom which cannot be moved." 
Contrasted with this, the literal shaking of the earth, the 
trembling and qualcing of Sinai at the giving of the law, 
loses somewhat of its impressive grandeur. That was wonder- 
ful, indeed, but here is something of far greater moment and 
significance: revolution upon revolution, moral earthquakes, 
changes in principalities and powers, the sweeping away of 
things that ave made, the whole universe moved by new con- 
vulsions and upheavings, and all the nations and kingdoms of 
the earth trembling and shaken in the mighty birth-throes of 
a kingdom whose foundations will never be shaken, and 
against which even the gates of death and hell shall not 
prevail. 

By a reference to the original prophecy and its connections 
as found in Haggai, it will be seen that the prediction is not 



of a single act or event at a particular and specified time, 
but of a series of acts that was soon to begin and to continue 
indefinitely until everything not in harmony with the king- 
dom of Christ should be swept away. The inspired comment 
of the Apostle to the Hebrews clearly sustains this view. 
We by no means exhaust the passage when we regard it as 
having sole reference to the extraordinary phenomena accom- 
panying the introduction of the gospel. It the rather sweeps 
over and embraces the whole field of change and revolution ; 
not only that by which the new dispensation was ushered in, 
but also that by which the kingdom of God among men is to 
be carried forward and ultimately established from the river 
unto the ends of the earth ; not only that which immediately 
preceded and was connected with the advent of Christ, but 
also that which has transpired since and is transpiring to-day. 
Here is the key to all history. Here is the philosophy of 
revblution. Here is the plan of God. Here those overturn- 
ings and convulsions whereby one nation after another has 
been thrown into the ascendant, and one quantity after 
another has been eliminated from the great moral problem of 
the ages, find their complete solution. A new and more 
glorious dispensation is to bless the world. A kingdom is to 
be set up that cannot be moved. Redemption is to be accom- 
plished. It has been determined on in the counsels of heaven; 
and unless God fail and there be no God, it will be brought 
to pass. Error will be beaten down, and despotisms over- 
thrown, and darkness dispelled, and Right and Truth and 
Justice and Liberty enthroned under the benignant and uni- 
versal empireship of Christ. This cannot be, save by signal 
and mighty struggles. That grand colossal power of dark- 
ness, that ruin of indescribable grandeur, the Chief of hell. , 



8 



having acquired such supremacy over this world as to be 
called the God of it, will not quietly and peacefully yield hi.s 
possession. Redemption must he by conjlict, and at a cost. 

WhiJe, therefore, Satan has firm foothold in this revolted 
province — while there remains the ungodly nature of existing 
political forms — while states and nations, as the powers that 
be, refuse to be the ministers of God for good — while corrup- 
tion flaunts its shameless tinsel in high places, and the robes 
of office are soiled in the filthy pool of interest — while public 
and national wrongs are justified on the ground of expediency, 
and God's truth is wrested and tortured into upholding 
gigantic iniquity — while men think more of their party than 
of their country — while greed and gold are substituted for 
grace and godliness — while hoary iniquities frown defiantly 
from their places of power, fortressed about by ignorance 
and prejudice and error ; in short, while there is a force or an 
interest or a scheme or a device of evil under the control or 
at the command of, or that can in any way be used by the 
powers of darkness to impede and arrest the progress of 
God's kingdom of light, great political convulsions, mighty 
upheavings, conflicts, revolutions, tumults of nations, must be 
expected. This is God's order. It is written down in the 
books. It is concreted in historic fact. I will shake the 
heavens and the earth and the sea and all nations ; I will over- 
turn, overturn, overturn it, saith the Lord. For this, Persia 
fell before Greece. For this, the four Alexandrian dynasties 
tottered to their fall, shaken down by each other and by the 
oncoming power of imperial Rome. For this, Rome herself, 
the empire that environed the earth, "to strike which was 
like trying to startle the stars," trembled and fell at last in 
the presence of new convulsions. For this, all Europe slept 



in that long night of seeming moral stupor called the Dark 
Ages, while Christianity was being cast into the established 
formulas of human thought and compacted into logical creeds, 
and the sifting and eliminating process referred to in my 
text was going on with reference to Christian doctrine. For 
this, that same Europe was all ablaze with the fire of revolu- 
tion and rocked to its base with the birth-throes of religious 
freedom, when those creeds came forth from their monastic 
retreats instinct with the glowing and God-given life of the 
Reformation. For this, "changes are passing upon the 
internal policy and the outward face of nations" today. 
And for this, we are now summoned to the dread conflict of 
arms and the bitter baptism of blood. The eliminating 
process is going on. The Past is prophet of the Present 
and the Future. Just as at the inauguration of the Christian 
system, so now and henceforth, God will unsettle and shake 
every earthly thing that rests not on himself or is not in 
harmony with his kingdom on earth. 

This mode of propagating God's truth seldom enters into 
our thought, in connection with the work of preaching the 
gospel. -The Church, with rare exceptions, has heeded the 
mandate of her Lfrd, and put up her sword in its sheath, 
remembering the words of the Master, "all they that take 
the sword, shall perish with the sword." She has known 
that the weapons to be wielded in her strife Avith the adversa- 
ry, and which alone arc mighty through God, are not carnal. 
And so, she has sought, not by summoning to her aid armed 
legions, or drawing the sword, or fomenting sedition, but by 
peaceful, holy teaching, and humble, holy living, to win her 
bloodless victories of faith and love, pushing her conquests 
thus around the world. No one can doubt that this is as the 



10 

great Head of the Church woukl have it, and in entire har- 
mony with the spirit of His gospel of peace. 

It is not strange, therefore, that the Church has accustomed 
herself to regard the prosecution of the great evangelism as 
wholly peaceful. She is shut up of God to the use of spirit- 
ual weapons. And with these and these alone, and not by 
sword and bayonet, and shot and shell, has she been taught 
to storm the frowning battlements of her foes. Naturally 
enough, she mourns the time of cloud and storm as unfavor- 
able to her peaceful work. And I doubt not the most of us 
stand to-day in the midst of this conflict and carnage and 
shaking of the nations, wondering if indeed God will make 
the hostile elements obedient to his high behests; wondering 
if indeed such awful struggle at such fearful cost can be a 
nart of the chosen means of helping on the cause of Him 
whose advent in our world was heralded by the angels' song 
of peace and good will. 

That they are such, not as devised by man, but in the un- 
folding plan of God, has other scriptural confirmation than 
the words of my text. The divine word bears frequent aud 
emphatic testimony to the fact, that only by signal and 
mighty struggles is Satan to be dispossessed of his kingdom 
and sovereignty. The devil will not be quietly ejected from 
premises once his. He did indeed come out of the lunatic 
mentioned in the Gospel, but he came out foaming^ ragiyig 
mad, tearing and rending the man sore, and leaving him as 
one dead. To cast him out of a nation or a world ! Ah, it 
is no wonder the might of the conflict has sometimes made 
the very earth tremble I 

Impressive scriptural and historical corroboration of the 
truth we are now considering is given in one of the nine 



11 

visions of the Prophet Zechariah, when he was attempting to 
arouse and stimulate the Jews to increased effort in prosecuting 
the work of rebuilding the Temple. This was a work well 
fitted to call forth the malignant opposition of the great ad- 
versary. If he could thAvart it, and defeat the purpose of 
Zerubbabel, his success would go far to secure his supremacy 
in this rebellious world. Consider the circumstances. The 
Jews, you know, were God's chosen people. They had long 
been the objects of his special care. All the surrounding 
nations were under the full dominion of the Prince of the 
power of the air. Only Israel's altars smoked with accept- 
able sacrifice. Only Israel's temple was erected to the true 
God. By the cunning wiles of Satan, this chosen people had 
been seduced from their allegiance to Jehovah, and had so 
utterly forfeited their claims to his favor, that lie had allowed 
their enemies to make their land a desolation and their temple 
a heap of rubbish, while they themselves were borne away 
in captivity to Babylon. By the Babylonian streams the 
captives hung their harps upon the willows, for they could 
not sing the songs of Zion in a strange land. This was a 
triumph hour for Satan. The house, built with such lavish 
expenditure for the Avorship of the great God, was in ruins: 
his people were in bondage to idolaters: no temple in all the 
wide world resounded to his praise : worship everywhere was 
a delusion and a lie. Could the battling foe of God keep it 
so? That was the great question. Prophecy and promise 
were against him. But faltering not, he marshaled his 
minions, and when a feeble band of Jews went out to rebuild 
the temple, they met with bold, relentless and desperate 
opposition. It was just here that the vision was vouchsafed 
to the prophet. The record is, "He showed me Joshua, the 



12 

high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan 
standing at his right hand to resist him.'" It was a pregnant 
juncture. The friends of truth were stirring themselves. It 
looked as if some great advance was to be made toward the 
great consummation. The hosts loyal to God were being 
marshaled. Joshua, their leader, appeared upon the scene. 
But lo ! the devil was there also. The ever watchful adver- 
sary was at his post. Vantage ground once gained he would 
not yield without a struggle. And he liked not the thought 
of a reconstructed temple and a re-established worship, where 
the God that thrust him out of heaven should be adored and 
honored. This hater and foe of truth, however, did not 
succeed. The vision assured the Jews, that Satan, with all 
his cunning and malignity, ringing the changes on his railing 
accusations, would not avail to secure the discomfiture and 
overthrow of Joshua. The temple was reared, its walls went 
up, and Israel bowed down to the gods of the heathen never- 
more. 

The vision fitly represents the moral antagonisms in our 
world. It symbolizes the great conflict that the centuries 
have witnessed between the right and the Avrong, truth and 
falsehood, freedom and oppression, Christ and Belial, heaven 
and hell. It pictorially illustrates the words of the Apostle, 
declaring that the warfare is "not against flesh and blood, 
but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers 
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
in high places." Whenever a Joshua stands before the angel 
of the Lord to effect any work for the truth and for God, 
Satan stands "at his right hand to resist him." His dark 
and baleful presence, his fierce and dire opposition must be 
expected, as one of the necessary incidents of moral progress. 



13 

This is the significance of the vision. Two antagonistic 
principles are sought to be established. Two antagonistic 
forces are battling for supremacy. And this earth is the 
theatre of the conflict. Just as at Jerusalem, so everywhere, 
at all the crisis-points, there will be tumult, commotion, blood 
and death. Satan will surely rend and tear before he is 
utterly cast out. It is the inevitable cost of redemption. 

Hear the words of the King: "I came not to send peace, 
but a sword." "I am come to send fire on the earth." He 
knew from his own forty days struggle with Satan in the 
wilderness, that not an inch of this revolted province could 
be won back to God without conflict. He knew that the 
principles he taught were in deadly antagonism to those 
having prevalence and power in the world ; and that if they 
gained supremacy, it must often be at a cost, setting the son 
at variance with the father, and the father with the son, and 
making a man's foes those of his own household. Christi- 
anity, therefore, in the very terms in which it is announced 
by its Author and Lord, and notwithstanding its burden of 
love, is a declaration of ivar to the world. Satan accepted 
the declaration, and fully alive to the perilous exigency, came 
to confront in his own person the Joshua sent of God. They 
met in the wilderness, just as Jesus passed from his baptism 
in Jordan, where he had been consecrated and divinely 
equipped for his official work. For forty days the great 
Adversary sought to pierce the armor of the Prince of Life. 
But all his lances were shivered against the bulwarks of this 
Joshua's faith. He prepared for a last and desperate onset. 
Once and again and again he hurled himself upon his princely 
foe. Earth was never the scene of battle so momentous in 
its issues, and of such eternal consequence. Heaven and 



14 

Hell listened for tidings from the great contestants. Before 
that "battle of the wilderness" our's across the Rapidan, 
with all its vast interests, sinks into nothingness. 

Thanks be to God, the devil was beaten. The victorious 
Joshua, with the trusty sword of the Spirit, laid the dragon 
low in the dust. The mighty potentate of evil had come forth 
to resist and crush the Prince of Life, but he was compelled 
to ground his weapons, and to retire from the contest utterly 
routed and covered with shame. But though vanquished, he 
was not destroyed. The record is, "he departed from him 
for a season.^' The strife was not over. He laughed to 
scorn the idea of a peaceful restoration of this province of 
his to the empire of God. He changed his tactics. The 
conflict in the wilderness was personal, and the arms spiritual. 
But now he gathered his legions. He stirred up his camp- 
followers. He called his earthly minions to his aid, and 
arming them with carnal weapons and firing them with every 
mad passion of hell, he sent them against the foe. It was 
then and there, in that subsequent battle lasting for centuries, 
opening with the shedding of the august blood of the Son of 
God, and continued with persecutions such as the world never 
saw, amidst the shaking of the heavens and the earth, and 
the sea and all nations, while Heathenism, Judaism and Im- 
perial Rome — the three gigantic powers of which Satan was 
then the com pie test master — his most mighty and efficient 
corps commanders, marshaled their forces and SAvept them 
against God's chosen with fell purpose to obliterate utterly 
and forever from the earth every vestige of the hated king- 
dom of righteousness ; while the blood-red hand of war was 
doing its ghastly work, and the sword was smiting to destroy ; 
while "the things that were," those ancient, mighty, and 



15 

seemingly impregnable institutions, hoary with iniquity, were 
upheaved and broken and wrecked and "brought to naught"— 
it was then and there, in the very midst of clouds whose 
bosoms seemed heavy with thunderbolts of destruction, 
that Christianity achieved its proudest triumphs, dominating 
over all foes, and taking its seat in the very palaces of the 
seven-hilled city. 

Again : when the very triumphs of a pure Christianity, its 
marvelous successes, the kingly posts of honor it had won, 
were the means of its corruption — when the Church of God 
had grown drunk with pride and lost her spirituality— when 
her high places had become cages of unclean birds, and the 
Lamb's wife had left her Beloved and become a harlot — when 
she had sealed and locked her Bible and was exacting penance 
and granting indulgences, while her Popes stood the branded 
usurpers of the prerogatives of God, professing to hold the 
keys of heaven and hell, and another revolution shook all 
Europe, a Joshua appearing in the person of the monk of 
Wittemberg, sounding the trumpet charge for God's elect, 
and the resisting Satan employed the Mystery of Iniquity, 
with all her dread enginery, to crush the truth and arrest the 
onward march of the gospel ; and when that huge organization 
of spiritual despotism, surcharged with the spirit of xVnti- 
Christ, intoxicated with the blood of martyrs, so corrupt, so 
vast, so potent, before which proud kings trembled, and at 
the tiireatenings of whose anathemas monarchs came and 
kissed the feet of her Popes— when she thundered bulls from 
the Vatican, devised racks for exquisite torture, and made 
the faggot and the stake her pitiless ministers of vengeance ; 
then it was again, amidst the shaking of the nations and 
grand upheavals, and overturnings upon overturnings, that 



16 

the pure Gospel was spread abroad and Christianity advanced 
to fresh and signal conquests, and wrong was discrowned and 
right borne on toward ultimate victory, and new foundations 
laid for the kingdom that cannot be moved. 

Clearly, therefore, by the voice of history and the Word 
of God, the events that stir the world's heart and absorb the 
world's thought to-day, are by no means necessarily to be re- 
garded as hindrances to moral progress, as mountainous ob- 
stacles to the successful prosecution of our evangelism. The 
doctrine of liberty, equality and brotherhood in Christ Jesus 
strikes at the root of all godless political forms. Faithfully 
preached, as the Church of God must preach it, if she would 
be true to her great commission, it endangers Satan's supre- 
macy, and arouses his wrath. It kindles hate in men's hearts 
who have been used to usurped and lawless power. We need 
not fear that wrath and hate. They may bring cloud and 
storm, strife and carnage and revolution. But even these, 
under the ordering hand of God, shall be made to praise him. 
They come from Satan's resistance to Truth's march onward 
and upward to her crown and throne. They are in God's 
plan of redemption. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, 
saith the Lord. I will shake the heavens and the earth, and 
the sea and all nations. 

Such is the interpretation to be given the signal changes 
and struggles that mark the hour. The gates of the nations 
were barred against the Gospel, and God is battering them 
down. Hoary iniquities had laid their foundations broad and 
deep in the soil of the world's heart, and God is upheaving 
them. All over the world it looks as if there were, and were 
to be, shakings of the nations : as if the spirit of Joshua were 
abroad in the earth, marshaling forces to beat back darkness, 



17 



to enthrone the conscience, and to aid in transferring this re- 
bellious province from the empire of Satan to the empire of 
God. And naturally enough, yea, as the inevitable conse- 
quence of the purpose and effort to secure this moral progress, 
Satan is abroad to resist him. It has been so in the past, it 
is so to-day, it will be so in the future, until the power of the 
great adversary is utterly broken, and there remain no vestige 
of it in the whole earth. 

And this lifts the great conflict unto which we are called, 
far above the petty interests of politics and parties. It is a 
war of principalities and powers, and the rulers of the dark- 
ness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places, no 
less than a war of flesh and blood. We may be sure the fallen 
principalities have deep interest and are vitally concerned 
in struggle so momentous as ours. Where government or- 
dained of God is at stake — where law, fair form of liberty, 
and liberty, the soul of law, are at stake— where equality and 
brotherhood in Christ are at stake— where the principle that 
God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth is at 
stake, there Satan is not idle. No such field of strife is with- 
out his overshadowing presence. Hence the violence and 
carnage and cost. We have been praying for the success of 
the Gospel and the reign of Christ. "Thy kingdom come" 
has been upon our lips a daily petition. But what kind of 
answers have we been looking for? When God promised the 
heathen to his Son for an inheritance, and the uttermost parttr 
of the earth for a possession, did he expect that by peaceful 
means this would all be brought to pass? Was it the thought 
of the Father that the nations would bow at once in glad obe- 
dience to Jesus, and give him joyful welcome as their King? 
Was it all to be calm and quiet like a peaceful summer sea ? 



18 

No I Right upon the heel of that blessed promise it is writ- 
ten, " Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron: thou shalt 
dash them in pieces like a potter s vessel." We pray sometimes 
as if we thought Satan would gently slide his kingdom out and 
God would gently slide his kingdom in ; and when our pra} ers 
are answered by thunders and lightnings and moral earth- 
quakes, these terrible things in righteousness make us tremble. 
Ah, this is the sword that Christ came to send ! This is the 
Avenger breaking with a rod of iron and dashing in pieces like 
a potter's vessel ! This is the struggle between the reforming 
Joshua and the resisting Satan before the Angel of the Lord ! 
The practical inferences to be drawn from this discussion 
readily suggest themselves. I remark, 

I. Such a vieiv of the subject makes it glorious to live in the 
midst of these shakings. It is cause for thankfulness that we 
are permitted to see God's ways thus impressively vindicated : 
that to our very sight the demonstration is being made to-day : 
that ours is the baptism of cloud, whose night is to be follow- 
ed by new sunrises of light and liberty. If it be true that 
the enthronement of the Messiah is to be by breaking with a 
rod of iron and dashing in pieces like a potter's vessel — if 
overturning and overturning be Heaven's law of progress — if 
the kingdom that cannot be moved can only be established by 
the shaking of the nations — if convulsions and revolutions and 
tumults are God's means of disarming wrong, and beating down 
error, and breaking heavy yokes — if these solemn passovers 
of human history must precede the jubilees of freedom, then 
thariks be to God that we live to-day ! 

These are troublous times, I know: times of sacrifice and 
loss, times of blighted homes and riven hearts, times when 



19 

justice "with feet of wool" has overtaken this nation and laid 
down upon it her "hands of iron," and only God can uplift 
and unclasp them; and yet, if thus truth is to be vindicated 
and liberty proclaimed, and oppression that has "heaped its 
insults in the face of Heaven's Anointed" swept away, and the 
nation regenerated, and right borne on to complete and final 
victory over wrong, then it is glorious to be in such times and 
to Avitness them. "If the truth shall make you free, ye shall 
be free indeed." 

Who would not rather have lived amid the awful plagues 
and fearful desolations, and shared the trials and sacrifices 
and losses that accompanied Israel's deliverance from bond- 
age and passage through the wilderness, than to have stayed 
in peace amid the flesh-pots of Egypt ! Who would not rather 
have lived at the dawn of the new dispensation, ushered in 
as it was with persecutions and overthrow and bloodshed and 
great tribulation, than amid the peaceful pomp and burden- 
some forms of the old! Well might those glorious Reformers 
of the sixteenth century thank God for witnessing Europe's 
upheaval! Better far, that, with all its cost of blood and 
death, than the stupor and stagnation and corruption that 
preceded it. So God sifts the nations. So he redresses the 
evils of the world. So mankind go forth to welfare. When 
the crisis comes, its aspect seems stern and aAvful. It must 
ever be so. There is mourning and anguish. Crime and 
selfishness have gained such a hold in the national heart, that 
they cannot be dislodged without violence. There the hand- 
writing appears upon the wall. God breaks down the barrier 
with a rod of iron, and dashes his foes in pieces like a potter's 
vessel. " The chariot of justice seems a car of Juggernaut, 
crushing the necks of men." But Christ is seated in it, the 



20 

■avenger of his own elect. They have cried day and night 
unto him, and not in vain. And though he answers with 
thunderings and lightnings, yet amid the tumult, yea, by means 
of it, steadily rises his empire of truth and love. From the 
field of havoc is reaped rich harvest of human welfare. 
'•Thus the gazers of the nations and the watchers of the skies, 
Looking through the coming ages, shall behold with joyful eyes, 
On the fiery track of freedom, fall the mild, baptismal rain, 
And the ashes of old evil feed the Future's golden grain." 

We may not see all that harvest. We probably shall not. 
But who can doubt that it will be garnered. Already the 
bloody soil is yielding us some precious fruit. Already the 
gigantic iniquity, whose baleful influence Avas felt in our 
halls of legislation, in our courts of justice and in the Church 
of God, corrupting the springs of our national life, perverting 
the mora;l sense of the people, poisoning the fountains of re- 
ligious truth, dictating and demanding the promulgation of 
another gospel message than that of Him who said he came 
to this w^orld "to preach deliverance to the captives and to 
set at liberty them that are bruised," and casting its black 
and awful shadows across this whole continent, is being swept 
a/way. Already God has so ordered events that they thunder 
in the ears of the nation, "It is vain to trust in wrong:'" 
"Without justice there is no power!" Already the Church 
of Christ of every denomination in the North is leaving the 
house of evil alliance and shaking the dust from off her feet ! 
We may well thank God for the demonstration. It is glorious, 
indeed, even in the midst of the raging storm, to stand and 
see that this word. Yet once more, signifies the removing of 
those things that are shaken, that the things that cannot be 
shaken may remain. 



21 

2. Such a view of the subject should go far to reconcile us 
to the cost at which moral progress is purchased. The good 
and the true come no other way. 

"I know, is all the mourner saith — 
Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
And life is perfected by death." 

Christ gave grand illustration of this truth when, at the 
inauguration of the redemptive scheme hj which this world 
is to be wrested from Satan, he died upon the cross. Not one 
step could have been taken toward victory over the Prince of 
the power of the air, had not that infinite and amazing sacri- 
fice been made. And if at such fearful cost, the Master must 
needs pass through the conflict, to come off conqueror, it would 
seem to be the very law of the kingdom and the very wish of 
our hearts, pain before palm, cross before crown, thorn before 
throne. If to inaugurate redemption, so great suffering was 
needful, surely to battle Satan clean off the earth and to 
bring to naught every iniquitous thing that he has established, 
will require sacrifice. Sacrifice is the badge of Christian 
discipleship. "In the world ye shall have tribulation." The 
sword hurts, but Christ sent it. Great crises and moral up- 
risings bring disturbance, but they uproot great iniquities. 
Jesus has shown us that the way to redemption is by the 
cross. '"To dream of roses without thorns, and of progress 
without suffering," says Gasparin, "we must shut our eyes." 
If so be that the progress come, if Satan's hold upon the 
world be loosed by the shaking of the nations, then Ave may 
be reconciled to the suffering, while we submissively bow our 
heads and adore the hand that smites us. 

I do not belittle the cost. I would abate nothing of a just 
estimate of the sacrifice being grandly and holily made by 



22 

the nation to-day. It is beyond all computation by dollars 
and cents. Again and again was I impressed with its awful- 
ness during a recent visit to the hospitals and the army. I 
had no adequate conception of it, until, in its bloody, ghastly 
reality, it looked me in the face. Nor is it all there 
in hospital and on battle-field. Even the long catalogue of 
the wounded and the dead, freedom's immortal roll of honor, 
does not give the cost. When is known all the anguish of 
human hearts that have moaned their sad plaint only in the 
ear of God — of widowed vigils by the cradle-side, watching 
in silent agony there over the little sleepers God has written 
fatherless — of almost broken-hearted parents, that have been 
bowed down with sorrow because their Joseph is not and their 
Simeon is not, and because their Benjamin may be also 
taken — when all this is known, and greatly more that shall 
only be known in the day when nothing shall be hidden — then 
only will it be possible to conceive how dearly we paid for the 
human welfare that is to be the fruitage of this fearful strife. 
No: it does not enter into the plan of Heaven to blot out 
great iniquities without chastisement. God gives no victory 
to Joshua over the resisting Satan save through sacrifice. 
Sacrifice precious indeed beyond all price. We need to meet 
and make it in the spirit of the battle-scarred hero at 
Fredericksburg, who lay there with both legs ofi" up close to 
his thighs, and yet who said with a smile, as his great loss 
was referred to, "I believe my country demanded it, and my 
God demanded it: for I am sure the cause a7id kingdom of 
Christ will he advanced by this struggle!" In what humilia- 
ting and shameful contrast, is the spirit of those here at 
home in the North, who send up constant Avail over increased 
taxation and the high prices — who fill the air with the hoarse 



23 

dissonance of their croakings of national disintegration and 
ruin, while laboring to bring to pass their malign prophecies — 
yea, who are willing to sell the truth and betray our holy 
cause, for the domination of a party ! 0, that we all might 
breathe the spirit of that mutilated brave, and believe in the 
fullness of our hearts, as he did, that suffering and sacrifice 
and loss and death are but the gateways opening into a higher 
and holier national life. We shall see it, by and by, my 
Christian friends, and the greatest sufferers of us all be 
reconciled to the cost. Yea, I believe the time is coming 
when the mother that climbed her mount of sacrifice, and laid 
her first-born and her second and her all upon the altar in 
these days of trial, will sit upon some hill of rest up in 
heaven, and thank God that she was permitted a share in the 
cost of this nation's redemption — thank God that she was 
permitted a share in the cost at which one of the great 
bulwarks of Satan's kingdom Avas overthrown, to make way 
for the battlements of the kingdom that cannot be moved. 

3. Such a view of the subject should encowage us to 
increased prayer and effort for the extension of Christ's king- 
do7n, and to increased confidence in its success. We are too 
prone to think these times of storm hindrances to progress. 
We are tempted to remit our efforts for the coming of the 
kingdom, until the calamities be overpast, and to go to our 
altars with lame and lazy petitions. We read of the mild- 
ness and beneficence of our King, and that he is to come 
gently to his possessions, like rain upon the mown grass and 
as showers that water the earth, and we fail to remember the 
other aspect of his coming, with thunders and lightnings and 
earthquakes. We know that the Church of God is shut up 



24 

to the use of spiritual weapons in prosecuting the great 
evangelism, and we bear not in mind that no such restriction 
is upon God himself — nay, that his own word points to the 
use in his providence of weapons of violence, made potent 
by his ordering and omnipotent will, to '■^ break'' and '-'■dash 
in pieces,'" and thus secure the supremacy of his Son, our 
Saviour. We stand in the midst of shakings and overturn- 
ings, and we forget to take to our hearts the inspired 
explanation of them — God's own prophecy of their results. 
I am here to-day to remind you of their true significance: to 
bid you, in God's name, take hope and heart in view of the 
truth that is appHcable to these troublous times. They 
signify the removal of those things that are shaken, as mere 
created things, begotten of the devil in the evil heart of 
man — giant wrongs, hoary iniquities, godless enactments, 
oppressions, injustice, Satanic "strong-holds;" that those 
things which cannot be shaken may remain — the eternal 
principles of truth and righteousness, justice and liberty, the 
kingdom of God among men. These shall survive the shock 
of contending hosts. These shall outride and outlast all 
revolutions. Nay: revolutions, rebellions, violence, the sword, 
shall be their obedient servants. There is no domination on 
earth or in hell that can forever hold justice under the heel 
of power. There is no priestly hierarchy, no lording aristoc- 
racy, no man or men that can forever rob other men of the 
right and the assertion of liberty. There is no plan of Satan, 
however cunning its device, and however marvelous the ad- 
dress and energy of its attempted execution, that can thwart 
the plan of God. He means redemption. He means liberty. 
He means justice, law, love, faith, hope, charity — the blossom- 
ing of the waste places — the binding up of the broken-heart- 



25 

ed — the comforting of the mourners — the breaking every 
yoke. And because he means this, the wrath of man, treason, 
rebellion, the shaking of the nations, war with its bloody 
hand, the sword smiting to destroy — these all shall be, they 
are for the removing of those things that are shaken, that 
those things which cannot be shaken may remain. I bless 
God for the prophecy and the promise. Here is ground for 
confidence. Here is firm footing for our feet, upon which we 
may stand and trust. Here is broader basis for gratitude, 
and occasion of profounder and heartier thanksgiving, than 
the mere gain of a battle or two. Though we are rent and 
torn and bleeding from the fierce conflict through which we 
are passing, we may pray on and labor on for our Immanuel, 
with no doubt as to the final result. The nation is shaken, 
that some quantity may be eliminated from the problem of 
human redemption — that some spirit of evil may be exorcised 
from the body politic — that the race may be helped on to its 
completed manhood in Christ. This much is made sure to us 
by God's word of truth. 

It may be in a way and a time that we think not, but God 
will see to it that the colossal power lording it over the realms 
of death, though he do stand at the right hand of our Joshua, 
resisting him with all the craft and subtlety of hell, shall not 
succeed. And who can tell, looking at this broad domain, 
coming, as come it will, under the beneficent rule of intelli- 
gence and godliness — who can tell what will be the rich fruits* 
of education and of religion that shall set the seal of the 
God of heaven upon the nation's deliverance, by the might 
of its loyal arms and the fire of its loyal hearts, from this 
present mad passion of treason ! 

Such a country, thus redeemed and consecrated, 0, I can. 
3 



26 

see how it could be used for Christ ! How He should crown 
it as the chief and foremost instrumentality in His redemptive 
work. How his advancing legions, going out from it in 
either direction, should enter the eastern and the western 
gates of the other hemisphere, and conquering ever, should 
keep on their victorious march, achieving the bloodless tro- 
phies of love and faith, until they should meet in the very- 
land where their King was once crowned with thorns, and 
celebrate there with attending angels in the chorus of the 
skies, the glorious consummation of prophecy and promise, 
a rebel world redeemed unto Crod by His blood! 

Thus, my hearers, we see what large encouragement there 
is to pray "Thy kingdom come," even in these stormy and 
terrible days, and while the nation is on the storm-swept and 
blood-red path of war. It seems as if God were shaking the 
heavens, but his word assures us it is not unto ruin. If night 
be upon us, it is only to precede a new and more glorious 
sunriso of liberty. What ruins lie in the wake of all progress. 
What struggles and mistakes and reverses there are. What 
carnage. What destruction. What death. It is the way of 
God — by suffering to victory. If much that is precious to 
us we ar ; obliged to lay upon the altar of sacrifice, God will 
see to it that it is not in vain. 

" backward looking son of time ! 
The new is old, the old is new, 
The cycle of a change sublime 
Still sweeping through. 

"Take heart! The waster builds again, 
A charmed life old goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish — but the grain 
Is not for death." 



27 

If we sow in tears, the harvest shall be the richer for the 
baptism, and the gleaning shall be to us and our children 
with the fullness of the blessing of the Great Reaper. 
Nothing that is true, nothing that is just, nothing that is in 
accord with the immutable things of God will be lost. For 
this word. Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those 
things that are shaken, that the things which cannot be 
shaken may remain. And when the sifting process is all 
over, and wrong is discrowned, and iniquity shorn of power, 
and oppression driven from the earth, and all hearts are 
loyal to the reign of love, theii will be brought to pass that 
divinest prophecy, "Behold the tabernacle of God is 
WITH men; and he will dwell with !chem, and they 

SHALL BE HIS PEOPLE, AND GOD HIMSELF SHALL BE WITH 
THEM AND BE THEIR GOD." 



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